24/12/2017 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty | The New Yorker

Fiction March 18, 1939 Issue

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

By James Thurber

e’re going through!” The Commander’s voice was like thin ice breaking.
“W He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled
down rakishly over one cold gray eye. “We can’t make it, sir. It’s spoiling for a
hurricane, if you ask me.” “I’m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,” said the
Commander. “Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8,500! We’re going
through!” The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-
pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He
walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” he
shouted. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” repeated Lieutenant Berg. “Full strength in No.
3 turret!” shouted the Commander. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” The crew, bending
to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at
each other and grinned. “The Old Man’ll get us through,” they said to one another.
“The Old Man ain’t afraid of Hell!” . . .

“Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast
for?”

“Hmm?” said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with
shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who
had yelled at him in a crowd. “You were up to fty- ve,” she said. “You know I don’t
like to go more than forty. You were up to fty- ve.” Walter Mitty drove on toward
Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty
years of Navy ying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. “You’re
tensed up again,” said Mrs. Mitty. “It’s one of your days. I wish you’d let Dr.
Renshaw look you over.”

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have
her hair done. “Remember to get those overshoes while I’m having my hair done,”
she said. “I don’t need overshoes,” said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag.

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“We’ve been all through that,” she said, getting out of the car. “You’re not a young
man any longer.” He raced the engine a little. “Why don’t you wear your gloves?
Have you lost your gloves?” Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the
gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he
had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. “Pick it up, brother!” snapped a
cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead.
He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital
on his way to the parking lot.

. . . “It’s the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan,” said the pretty nurse. “Yes?”
said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. “Who has the case?” “Dr. Renshaw
and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York
and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He ew over.” A door opened down a
long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard.
“Hello, Mitty,” he said. “We’re having the devil’s own time with McMillan, the
millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal
tract. Tertiary. Wish you’d take a look at him.” “Glad to,” said Mitty.

In the operating room there were whispered introductions: “Dr. Remington, Dr.
Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty.” “I’ve read your book on streptothricosis,”
said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. “A brilliant performance, sir.” “Thank you,”
said Walter Mitty. “Didn’t know you were in the States, Mitty,” grumbled
Remington. “Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary.”
“You are very kind,” said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the
operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-
pocketa-pocketa. “The new anaesthetizer is giving way!” shouted an interne. “There
is no one in the East who knows how to x it!” “Quiet, man!” said Mitty, in a low,
cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-
queep-pocketa-queep. He began ngering delicately a row of glistening dials. “Give
me a fountain pen!” he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a
faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. “That will hold for
ten minutes,” he said. “Get on with the operation.” A nurse hurried over and
whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. “Coreopsis has set in,” said
Renshaw nervously. “If you would take over, Mitty?” Mitty looked at him and at the
craven gure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two
great specialists. “If you wish,” he said. They slipped a white gown on him; he
adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .

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“Back it up, Mac! Look out for that Buick!” Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes.
“Wrong lane, Mac,” said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. “Gee.
Yeh,” muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked “Exit
Only.” “Leave her sit there,” said the attendant. “I’ll put her away.” Mitty got out of
the car. “Hey, better leave the key.” “Oh,” said Mitty, handing the man the ignition
key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it
where it belonged.

They’re so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they
think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New
Milford, and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had had to come out
in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garageman. Since then Mrs.
Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next
time, he thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling; they won’t grin at me then. I’ll
have my right arm in a sling and they’ll see I couldn’t possibly take the chains off
myself. He kicked at the slush on the sidewalk. “Overshoes,” he said to himself, and
he began looking for a shoe store.

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When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm,
Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to
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get. She had told him, twice, before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a
way he hated these weekly trips to town—he was always getting something wrong.
Kleenex, he thought, Squibb’s, razor blades? No. Toothpaste, toothbrush,
bicarbonate, carborundum, initiative and referendum? He gave it up. But she would
remember it. “Where’s the what’s-its-name?” she would ask. “Don’t tell me you
forgot the what’s-its-name.” A newsboy went by shouting something about the
Waterbury trial.

. . . “Perhaps this will refresh your memory.” The District Attorney suddenly thrust a
heavy automatic at the quiet gure on the witness stand. “Have you ever seen this
before?” Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. “This is my Webley-
Vickers 50.80,” he said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The
Judge rapped for order. “You are a crack shot with any sort of rearms, I believe?”
said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. “Objection!” shouted Mitty’s attorney. “We
have shown that the defendant could not have red the shot. We have shown that
he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July.” Walter Mitty
raised his hand brie y and the bickering attorneys were stilled. “With any known
make of gun,” he said evenly, “I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three
hundred feet with my left hand.” Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A
woman’s scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in
Walter Mitty’s arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising
from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. “You miserable
cur!” . . .

“Puppy biscuit,” said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of
Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman
who was passing laughed. “He said ‘Puppy biscuit,’ ” she said to her companion.
“That man said ‘Puppy biscuit’ to himself.” Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into
an A. & P., not the rst one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. “I
want some biscuit for small, young dogs,” he said to the clerk. “Any special brand,
sir?” The greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. “It says ‘Puppies Bark
for It’ on the box,” said Walter Mitty.

is wife would be through at the hairdresser’s in fteen minutes, Mitty saw in

H looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had
trouble drying it. She didn’t like to get to the hotel rst; she would want him to be
there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a
window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the oor beside it. He
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picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. “Can Germany
Conquer the World Through the Air?” Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of
bombing planes and of ruined streets.

. . . “The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir,” said the sergeant.
Captain Mitty looked up at him through touselled hair. “Get him to bed,” he said
wearily. “With the others. I’ll y alone.” “But you can’t, sir,” said the sergeant
anxiously. “It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding
hell out of the air. Von Richtman’s circus is between here and Saulier.” “Somebody’s
got to get that ammunition dump,” said Mitty. “I’m going over. Spot of brandy?” He
poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined
around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and
splinters ew through the room. “A bit of a near thing,” said Captain Mitty
carelessly. “The box barrage is closing in,” said the sergeant. “We only live once,
Sergeant,” said Mitty, with his faint, eeting smile. “Or do we?” He poured another
brandy and tossed it off. “I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir,” said
the sergeant. “Begging your pardon, sir.” Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his
huge Webley-Vickers automatic. “It’s forty kilometres through hell, sir,” said the
sergeant. Mitty nished one last brandy. “After all,” he said softly, “what isn’t?” The
pounding of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns,
and from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new
ame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming “Auprès
de Ma Blonde.” He turned and waved to the sergeant. “Cheerio!” he said. . . .

Something struck his shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over this hotel for you,” said
Mrs. Mitty. “Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to
nd you?” “Things close in,” said Walter Mitty vaguely. “What?” Mrs. Mitty said.
“Did you get the what’s-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What’s in that box?”
“Overshoes,” said Mitty. “Couldn’t you have put them on in the store?” “I was
thinking,” said Walter Mitty. “Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes
thinking?” She looked at him. “I’m going to take your temperature when I get you
home,” she said.

hey went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive
T whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot.
At the drugstore on the corner she said, “Wait here for me. I forgot something. I
won’t be a minute.” She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It
began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore,
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smoking. . . . He put his shoulders back and his heels together. “To hell with the
handkerchief,” said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette
and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, eeting smile playing about his lips, he
faced the ring squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the
Undefeated, inscrutable to the last. ♦

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